When Richard Nixon was in office and outfitted the White House staff in uniforms resembling those in European palaces, I wondered if he didn’t know he had reached his last election.
The uniforms were later sold for use by an Iowan high school band.
Now we have speculation fueled by President Donald Trump that he might serve a third term.
Trump is in his last term, as I read the U.S. Constitution.
In my opinion, encouraging speculation to the contrary is not useful to his accomplishing his vision to re-shape American government
Paul Caron on his “TaxProf Blog” reprints a piece by Paul D. Miller entitled, “A Confessing Church for America’s Weimar Moment.”
Miller writes of how German Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer heroically defied the Nazis. (He was ordered killed by Hitler three weeks before the end of the war when even Der Führer knew his army would be defeated.)
“The principles of the Confessing Church were not valid only for their moment; they were timeless principles of political theology that should bind the universal church in all times and places,” Miller writes.
“It’s a relevant question for the American church in 2025. Whether you are on the left or the right, it is tempting to see ourselves as living through Germany in 1933, confronting the moral equivalent of the Nazis on the other side…
“But the analogy can be misleading, and it excuses us from examining our own side. We should be able to spot injustices from both sides of the political aisle. It is harder, intellectually and spiritually, to confront a different historical analogy. Maybe we’re not living through the Nazi regime in 1933, but through the Weimar Republic of 1923…
“American Christians seem divided over who the good guys and bad guys really are and what the historical analogy should teach us.
“To some, the secular progressive left is the obvious modern equivalent of the Nazis:
- allowing a Holocaust on the unborn,
- fostering an authoritarian culture on campuses and in newsrooms,
- demanding the state’s validation and endorsement for every excess of the sexual revolution.
“To others, President Donald Trump and his MAGA movement are the baddies:
- preaching belligerent nationalism,
- demanding absolute loyalty to a singular leader,
- subverting the rule of law, and
- rewarding political violence.
“What if both groups of Christians are right, in a way?
“It isn’t hard to find bad guys: They’re all around us.
“But if we recognize that there isn’t a single bad guy, bad group, or bad party—but many of them—we should hesitate before thinking that we are living through 1933
“Maybe the calling of the American church today isn’t to mount a heroic resistance unto death against a singular moral evil that unites all people of good conscience in opposition.
“Maybe the calling of the church today is to recognize injustices and evils all around us, to maintain our independence, and above all to be an advocate: not for one party or the other, but for lawfulness and peace among political tribes…”
The whole article is worth reading although I do part ways with portions of it.
